


Kneel

by objectlesson



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: D/s, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Master/Slave, Slavery, power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:14:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2745548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esca owes nothing to Rome, but he owes everything to Marcus. Who, in many ways, is the same thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kneel

**Author's Note:**

> I'm terrible at that thing we call history, and have never read the book this (somewhat awful) film is based upon.This means that the story you're about to read (or not) is likely full of glaring inaccuracies. I watched this thing and then proceeded to churn this out over the next few days, mostly as a meditation on the exchange of power in relationships where one party is awarded privilege the other is not, rather than a true fanfiction. All that being said, I don't think it's entirely bad, or at least the prose itself is not, so hopefully someone will be inclined to read it. I do not own anything, this never happened.

Outside it is nearly raining, the air alive with a mist so fine it chokes Esca with every lungful. From the stables he watches the way the horizon seems to tremble with the weight of imminent wet, and curries dust out of Marcus’s horse’s black coat. Everything smells sweet like hay and manure. He can feel Marcus’s eyes scouring across his own bare shoulders, as they often do, and shivers. 

“You’re not wearing a tunic,” Marcus observes, his breath hot and too near Esca’s neck. He wills himself to not step away, to not back down from Rome. Their arms brush, and Marcus hefts his heavy leather saddle onto his horse’s back, tendons in his forearm flexing inches away from Esca’s lips. 

He shrugs and trades the curry comb for the hoof pick. “It only gets dirty.” He bends to slide firm fingers down to the horse’s fetlock, rain and sweat slick hair hanging in his face. With or without a tunic, he is always filthy. It’s part of his job, and he wants Marcus to see that. Witness it, the smudges on his cheeks and across his chest, witness what it means to be owned as property. Even if the job is not dirty, the job is dirty. 

“Dirty,” Marcus sighs, cinching the saddle girth tight. “Nothing unusual for a slave.” 

“No,” Esca says, standing and locking eyes with Marcus. _Precisely_. 

It lasts too long. It always does. Esca is trying to show something to Marcus, trying to make a point to him, to Rome, but it always ends this way. With Marcus staring back in unexpected candor, his eyes careful and searching and heated, their bodies too close for nothing, too far for a fight. Esca is often left vaguely uncertain as to what has just happened between them, what it meant, what it means. Sometimes his heart is racing, other times his fists are clenched for impact, other times he is, miraculously, moved. Marcus breaks first this time, looks down and steps away, the tension which always makes his soldier’s body so upright falling away like the mist outside. 

Marcus is very, very unlike Esca’s former master. For one, he does not stare until Esca backs down. He will back down first most times they become locked into each other that way. He is also young and beautiful, a statue of a Roman Esca saw before he actually saw what a Roman truly was. He helps his slave tack his horse. He calls Esca by his first name. He talks to him, rather than about him. He is in some ways, Rome the way Esca imagined Rome. In other ways, he is something entirely different. 

Esca does not want to owe his life to any version of Rome, but here he is. Tacking up Rome’s horse while Rome watches him with roving eyes, while Rome fastens bridle straps and adjusts the leather martingale. He rubs his horse’s neck fondly, threading blunt, calloused fingers through his forelock, before reaching to adjust his stirrup length. Esca ponders the line through Marcus’s forehead, the way he is doing slave’s work without even seeming to realize he is doing so. 

Esca reaches for the stirrup leather, taking it from Marcus’s grip. “Why do you always do this?” He snaps, voice low and sharp. 

Marcus laughs. “Do you find it insulting that I do not treat you as other men treat their slaves?”  
Marcus does not understand that it is insulting to be a slave. To be less than human. He doesn’t understand that it’s insulting to be treated as if you were human by someone who owns you as property. Esca collects saliva in his mouth, and imagines spitting it at Marcus, catching him on his broad shoulder, his square chin with the scar beneath it forever marking him as the incarnate of the Empire Esca loathes. Everything smells sweet, like manure and hay and sweat and barely rain. He swallows the mouthful before it ends up dripping down Marcus’s soft mouth, half-smiling in his absurd ignorance. A heat sparks to life somewhere in Esca’s gut, and there it begins to grow. 

\---

They ride out together often, sometimes to hunt, sometimes because Marcus prefers riding with company. It seems odd, even miraculous, that in these moments Esca can forget that he’s Marcus’s property, and feel as if he is his friend. It seems like like a betrayal to himself and his people to feel this way even in passing, but at the same time it’s a relief for his body to not be constantly taut with loathing, with humiliation.

Marcus and his horse are ahead of him, and Esca watches them sidle up next to the brush which rises up like tidal waves on either side of the trail they are riding. He reaches out, breaks a twig off, and turns in the saddle to tell Esca, “A game we used to play when off-duty. To practice riding in formation.” 

While his horse still ambles along, he very carefully places the twig upon the junction of two low hanging branches on a different tree. Then he moves his horse into a trot and turns around, coming up behind Esca. The Fresian tosses its great black head, teeth chinking wetly against the bit. “Now. You take it, ride ahead, and place it somewhere. I will follow.” 

Esca looks over his shoulder, gaze incredulous and locked on Marcus’s brown eyes, which are glimmering like someone much younger, with much less blood on his hands. These are the things Marcus has him do. Play soldier’s games on horseback. Skin rabbits while he tells stories about his father, about the absurd host of petty Roman gods all fucking and scorning one another like youth. Lace up his armor, which he sometimes puts on if only to look at himself in it, that heavy crease darkening his brow with remorse as he runs rough scarred hands over the leather panels on the shoulders like they are a part of himself now lost. Eat dinner by his side. Go on walks with him. Things a friend would do for another, not things a slave would do for a master. 

“You are going to ride past it,” Marcus warns, raising an eyebrow. 

Sighing, Esca leans out of his saddle and plucks the twig from its resting place between the branches, then nudges his horse to a trot. 

“Make sure you choose a sturdy place. Balance it,” Marcus calls from behind him. 

Esca shakes his head as he rides, chest swelling around a sensation which is becoming more familiar by the day. He doesn’t know what exactly it is, but he knows that it’s born from his ambivalence concerning Marcus Flavius Aquila. It feels like his skin is too small, too tight to contain the storm of amusement and resentment and rage and glory which expands in his chest whenever Marcus does not not live up to his expectation. When Marcus is Marcus, and not Rome. 

He slows his horse down but keeps her walking, scanning the brush for somewhere to place the twig. Everything seems too weak, too unstable. They ride in silence for a long time. 

“Harder than it looks, isn’t it?” Marcus says through a smile, riding up along aside Esca, too close, always too close. Their calves brush, and Esca’s insides tighten at the sound of leather on leather. “You have to take a risk. You cannot just carry it with you forever.” 

Esca glances at Marcus sidelong, lingering upon the flush of his cheeks, the shining line of perspiration on his neck. “I’m just waiting for the right place,” he offers after awhile. His words hang in the air as if he were referring to more than just this sprig of pine as long as his forearm, and Marcus’s open mouth closes, the box in his throat rising and falling as he swallows. He doesn’t say anything. 

Esca uses his outside leg to push his horse to the edge of the trail, tendrils of foliage snagging across his tunic and saddle blanket. He reaches out and carefully, carefully balances the twig upon a particularly thick patch of shrubbery. It stays, and he lets out a breath, just as Marcus audibly does the same behind him. “Now. Ride behind me,” Marcus advises, voice too full of breath, too low, and the storm expands inside Esca, threatening to tear him in two. 

He turns his mare tightly to the outside, watching Marcus reach into the thicket with confidence and close a fist around the twig. He kicks his horse and they canter ahead on the trail, wet-smelling mulch tearing out from under the horses hooves, and Esca follows, stomach an inexplicable series of knots. 

They trade this way for a mile or so, until the foliage begins to thin and Esca places the twig somewhere it cannot balance. It tumbles to the ground, and he throws his hands up in defeat. “I lost,” he says. 

“No,” Marcus says, short of breath, his horse crowding Esca’s so much they both pin their ears and gather their haunches beneath them to kick, spinning and tense. “Now, we race up the hill,” he explains, leaning up his horse’s neck and threading his fingers through his coarse black mane. “Whoever reaches the top first. He is the winner.” His eyes are explosive with pupil, his voice scraping across Esca’s skin in a way which tugs at him internally, like a meathook in his gut. “Go,” Marcus says. 

They kick their horses and surge up the hill, wind buffeting Esca’s face so hard his eyes stream. Marcus is galloping ahead of him, and the sound of hooves striking earth fills Esca up like his own heartbeat. The sensation is expansive, like flight, and for a moment he feels as if he is great enough to contain all the flurries and gales of the tremendous storm inside, as if he is great enough to contain all of Rome. 

\---  
There is a moon tonight, but the tremendous banks of fog in the sky block it from view, and the light it gives filters through weakly. It’s a very dark night, and Marcus’s face is a map of shadow. His fist keeps clenching and unclenching over his cup of wine as he sits on the edge of his bed with it balancing on his knee, head hanging and shoulders hunched like statue of a man lost in thought.

Marcus often gives way to this brooding darkness at night. When the sun is up he acts like a boy, ruddy cheeked and mirthful. He nudges his elbow against Esca’s ribs and calls him by his first name, he holds blades of grass between his thumbs and blows with a look of absolute, innocent focus, trying to make music as he did as a child, although he never seems to be able to anymore. He laughs.

But as the sun begins to sink into the horizon and he fills his cup with wine before dinner, the darkness descends like lead upon his shoulders, into his gaze. He ages before Esca’s eyes, becoming absent and thoughtful and visibly heavy with regret. This is when he calls Esca slave. This is when Marcus transforms into Rome, becoming vast and cold and cruel and inhuman. 

Esca used to grow tense with nearly uncontainable fury at this shift, the type of fury which felt pleasurable in its simplicity, in its indulgence. Now, he’s distantly hurt by it. In turn, the hurt makes him feel sick with self-disgust, makes him question his honor, his history, his meaning. Who is he if seeing a glimpse of one Roman’s humanity changes him so much that he feels betrayed when that humanity fades into an empire? Where does he belong? Who does he belong to? 

The answer, of course, is Marcus. This truth makes Esca feel desperate, like he wants to throw himself atop Marcus and press his forearm into his throat, choke the soldier out of him until he is just a man again, just a boy who cannot make music but still tries as he smiles, as the sun reflects off the sweat in his hair. Like he wants to slam his body into Marcus’s until it gives, until Rome breaks. 

Esca puts his head in his hands, ashamed. He is sitting across the room in a chair, watching while Marcus drinks and sits in silence, like he’s waiting for something. Esca aches to leave, but is very aware that he has not been dismissed. The silence stretches between them, punctuated only by the cicada’s chirp outside. Eventually, Marcus clears his throat, and speaks. “Do you find me to be a man of honor?” He asks. 

It’s not what he’s expecting. The words hang between them, soft rough all at once. Esca swallows. “As a slave, my opinion does not matter.” 

Marcus laughs, but it is not the laughter of a boy. It scrapes out of him like it hurts, harsh and humorless. “You are wrong.” He takes a swig of wine, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “It is because you are a slave that your opinion matters most.” 

Esca sits quietly, and his chest feels agape with confusion. Again, he wants to hurt Marcus. Hurt him so he shatters, and he can reconfigure those shattered fragments into a shape which makes sense, a shape he can contain and swallow, the shape of Rome. He rubs his palms up through his hair, sighing. Then he asks a question he has asked many times. “In the ring. Why did you spare me?” 

Marcus pauses, then answers as he always does, though there is less and less conviction in his voice each time he does so. It as if he is reciting a script, while his body belies the truth. “I meant nothing by it.” 

Something drawn very tight for far too long snaps inside Esca, and he suddenly stands beyond his will, striding across the room so that he is within inches of Marcus’s body. Startled, Marcus drops his wine and it topples to the ground, the splatter of it like a pool of blood on the tile. His knees press into Esca’s shins, and for once he is the one craning his neck to look up. 

“It means nothing for you to spare my life, yet you claim my opinion of your honor matters most?” he spits out, body shaking as it looms over Marcus’s. Marcus manages to stand, rising above Esca and bearing down upon him, the heat of his flesh stinging in its nearness. 

“I asked you if you found me an honorable man,” he asks again, tendons in his jaw flickering like flame. “It seems it is not something I need ask.” 

Breath is coming hot and fast from Esca, and he imagines throwing Marcus down onto the bed, choking him with needy palms, thumbing the scar on his throat until something collapses. He swallows thickly, heart racing, and Marcus comes so close their brows touch, skin sliding and pressing together with a sheen of perspiration. “What do you want from me?” He breathes, voice shuddering out of him and onto Marcus’s mouth. 

Marcus grabs him, one rough palm on his shoulder, the other on his wrist. His eyes darken a shade, from flint to midnight, and the shape of his lips softens as they part around the words, “You must know by now.” He grinds their foreheads together, the tip of his tongue flicking out to wet his lips, and Esca can sense the sadness radiating from him in great waves. Sadness, loneliness, want. The marks of a man who belongs nowhere, not to Rome, not to any master. In spite of himself, Esca aches for him. 

He aches, and he is terrified, because he _does_ know what Marcus wants. He has known for longer than he cares to admit that there is a reason why Marcus moves him, why he stares and why he is always, always too close. His pulse speeds under Marcus’s grip, and he answers, “If that is what you want, you could ask it of me. You could order me to please you. If that is your desire.” 

Marcus pulls their bodies flush, pressing the planes of his thighs and chest into Esca’s, digging his fingers into the divots of flesh and muscle and bone in his arm so hard Esca winces, showing his teeth. Marcus’s eyes flutter closed, and he murmurs thickly, “It is my desire. But I do not wish to order it of you. I do not...”He huffs out a breath, snaps his hips into Esca once as if it is beyond his control. Esca can feel the whole length of him, hot and hard and insistent against his thigh and his body shudders, the storm inside him swells. “I am an honorable man,” Marcus says, and releases Esca as if it pains him, turning away and stumbling to the wall. “You are dismissed.” 

Esca almost falls to his knees without the pressure of Marcus’s flesh to hold him up. He almost follows Marcus to the wall, presses him to it and opens his mouth on the knob of his spine. His mind is static, and for a moment he is so blinded by it he cannot remember what honor is, what shame is, what Rome did to him. He stands in the middle of the room with shaking hands until Marcus grinds out, “Please. Leave.” And he does. 

\---

That night Esca lays awake thinking about power. What it is, what it means. He stumbles to his straw pallet and sinks down upon it, his mind plagued with repeated images of Marcus’s tongue flickering over his lips, of Marcus’s jaw trembling with the effort it took to let him go. He rolls onto his stomach and props himself onto all fours, fisting his dick until he comes white-hot and static-eyed over his own palm. Then he collapses, knowing he should be ashamed. Will be ashamed, when the sensation fades and he is left with the memory of wanting Marcus so badly he didn’t care where he was from, or what it meant to be owned. 

Esca awaits humiliation, but miraculously, it never comes. He lies with a hand absently rubbing up and down his stomach, his eyes blinking in the dark and fixed upon a crack in the ceiling like a wall built across his country., dividing barbarism from civility, or at least the illusions of both. And that’s what power is, ultimately. An illusion. Esca thinks of Marcus’s body, his iron-hard soldier’s flesh, shuddering because of of _him_. Because he wanted him. Marcus’s desire made him weak, and Esca’s denial of that desire gave him power. 

Because Marcus values honor, he will not take what he desires by force. Regardless of whether Esca chooses to give him what he wants or chooses to hold it over his head, he is the one who possesses the power. He may be owned legally, in such way that is recognized by Rome, but in some ways, he owns pieces of Marcus, too. 

Just thinking about this makes Esca hard again, makes him twitch in his still sticky palm. He imagines storming his way back into Marcus’s quarters and straddling his wide lap, slamming him into the headboard and sealing their mouths. He imagines the way Marcus would crumble into him like rock into the tide. He imagines all that steel muscle and those hard angles melting under his hands, becoming nothing in their powerlessness. Even on his knees before Marcus, Esca would rule over him. It is the condition of being desired. 

He falls asleep curled around this new knowledge. It feels like some tremendous revelation, the small power he holds over Rome, the ways in which he can make Rome submit, pay for what it has taken from him, lay its throat willingly within his hand.

For awhile, just the idea of it is enough to make him hard each night. Enough to make him come hot and fast into his own hand and his own sheets, his body snapping like a whip and the image of Marcus’s dark eyes blackened with want burnt into him. For awhile. However, after weeks of this loathsome routine, Esca begins to crave more. The knowledge that he holds power is not the same as using that power. Abusing it. He doesn’t want to dream of Marcus shuddering to pieces beneath him, he wants to feel him come apart between his teeth. 

Still, Marcus is always too close, the space between them fraught with tension even more palpable now that Marcus gave his hunger a word, a name, a future. Alive now because Esca knows it is true. 

Eventually, his own fist and the truth without action is no longer enough. Some quiet aching night weeks later, the cicadas sing and Esca lies staring at the jagged wall on his ceiling, mind stuck on an infinite loop. He replays a moment which happened earlier that afternoon, when Marcus reached for him in the stables, a hand coursing through his hair fast and rough, pushing him into a wall between a saddle rack and a water trough. 

Esca thought for sure in this moment that Marcus would break. That his intention to not order Esca to give him the one thing he wanted from him most was forgotten, crushed beneath the overwhelm of the want itself. But he did not. He dragged his dirty thumb down Esca’s mouth, tasting of salt and iron and dirt and leather, then pushed off, eyes aflame and cheeks flushed crimson. Esca sank to the earth, blood thundering, and licked the taste off his mouth. Over and over again, he thinks of this moment, and over and over again, he longs for the flavor it left upon him. It stops feeling productive to deny Marcus because his own hunger is disempowering. If power is why he’s allowing these feelings room within him, then he must take something for his own. 

Finally, He rises on unsteady legs, blind in the darkness with hands made of tremor. His bare feet pad quietly through the tiled villa as he sleepwalks back to the room from which he has been sent away from night after night, heart in his throat. He pushes open the door and it whines on its hinges. 

Marcus is a curved shape in the darkness, all wine and bones, and Esca pauses for a moment and studies him, unable to slow his breathing. Then Marcus sits up abruptly, eyes glinting in the shadow. “I did not order you here,” he says hoarsely. 

Esca takes a step forward. “No you did not,” he answers. 

Marcus is on his feet in seconds, fists raised like he is ready to fight and Esca catches those fists in open palms, presses him back against the bed so that both their balance is stolen to the night. “You will not order me to do this to you,” he whispers, mouth hot and open against the scratchy stubble of Marcus’s flickering throat. “Why?” His voice gets stuck there, wet and warm, and he can feel the groan trapped inside Marcus sigh out of him. 

“Because,” Marcus swallows, “This. I wanted this. I wanted you to seek it from me,” He says. “I do not know why.” His huge, rough hands slide up over Esca’s shoulders and encircle them, and he inhales deeply from his hair. The whole of him is shaking. “I fear you,” he admits, and something enormous dislodges itself inside Esca’s gut, dropping out of him and leaving him stunned, moved, terrified. This is not exactly how he expected such things to happen. This is not how he expected Marcus to be. He expected to be holding all of Rome in his arms, but now, he is holding just a man. A boy, even. He is hard beyond all reason, beyond sanity or honor. 

He licks into Marcus’s pulse, and feels him flinch in longing, and then everything cracks. He roves clumsy hands up the back of Marcus’s neck to tangle in his hair, he tilts his head up and allows Marcus to kiss him so deeply it feels like he’s being choked by a entire empire. They grapple for a moment, fists in clothes and knees jamming between thighs, then Marcus uses his height to throw Esca onto the bed before covering him with his body, a suffocating weight. 

This, too, is not what Esca expected. He thought that Marcus might push him to his knees, he might take from him but never return because it is not honorable to touch a slave in such a way. He thought that once he gave his consent, their interactions would be characterized by Marcus’s demands. And he was prepared for that, to touch without being truly touched. 

But Marcus cannot stop touching. He rakes his palms up and down Esca’s chest, he traces his ribs and digs his fingers into the grooves on either side of his spine, he pulls his hair and grips his thighs to bring him closer, to pull his body into him like they are interlocking parts of some weapon, some puzzle to be solved. Esca spreads out beneath him, allowing himself to be split apart and felt like something worth feeling. He allows himself to be kissed into breathlessness, allows Marcus to suck on his tongue and bite his lower lip. He feels sick with the power of it, his dick twitching against his stomach and beneath Marcus’s heavy, grinding weight.

It feels better than anything Esca could have imagined happening in Rome, under Rome. He tries to hold onto his power, he tries to remember how he rationalized this, how he could keep afloat in this sea of overwhelm and sensation. How this is supposedly something he wants for reasons beyond the flesh. But eventually, Esca stops thinking about power. He stops thinking of anything at all. 

\--

It’s because Marcus asks Esca to share his bed rather than demanding it. It’s because they will lie side by side sometimes, panting in a sheen of sweat, and Marcus will roll Esca over, push his face into his hair and kiss the shell of his ear before murmuring “Thank you.” It’s because one time during a hunt Esca’s horse spooks and throws him to the earth, and Marcus let the boar escape without a second thought so that he could dismount and fall to Esca’s side. It’s because sometimes Marcus will catch his gaze across the room and hold it there like something alive, something worth preserving. Esca will feel as if there are no other Britons on the world besides him, and no other Romans besides Marcus, making them just two men in a world where both of those titles are useless, obsolete. 

It’s because of all these this that the mess between them becomes about something more than power. Esca can feel control slipping from him more each day, the more he thinks of Marcus as anything other than a slave holder, as his master, as Rome. If Marcus is a human, that is power lost. If Esca is nuanced in his humanity, than is even more power lost. Esca’s insides twist in fear every time he catches himself thinking that Marcus is a mystery, or a tragedy. He vowed to be a slave who never grew complacent within his master’s shackles, and here he is, lying next to his master in his bed, their skin stuck together along their torsos. 

Marcus props himself up on an arm and leans over Esca, studying him the way he often does after he’s just come beside him, inside him. Esca keeps his face impassive, unmoved, solid and stoic with the same wide blue eyes he offers Marcus any time they lock gazes. It’s difficult to appear unmoved when he is, in spite of himself, moved. Marcus traces the bones in Esca’s face, thumbing the hollow of his cheek before saying, “I can never tell what you are thinking,” he says. 

Esca blinks, slowly, and is relieved to know that Marcus cannot see the war he wages with himself, the losing war. “I am thinking that it’s very cool out tonight. That I might need to bring a saddle blanket in from the stables.” 

Marcus makes a humming noise in his throat and rubs his palm down Esca’s shoulder, his chest. It hurts in how good it feels, stings like betrayal. Esca’s flesh burns under Marcus’s palms, it burns if there is power, and it burns if there is not. “You can stay here tonight. With me.,” Marcus says carefully, his eyes fixed somewhere near Esca’s collarbone. “If you wish.” 

Again, the feeling of being moved. Unwelcome, out of control, like rain suddenly falling from a sun-streaked sky. Esca closes his eyes, and tries in vain to push the poison out of his own chest. “If I wish? I remind you I am your slave so often.” He disguises the disgust for himself with bitterness, and his voice comes out sharp. Marcus’s hand stills upon him. Then he swallows, his eyes dark and thoughtful. 

“In the ring. I did not feel pity for you,” he says. 

“No?” Esca says quietly. 

“I...I was struck by the way you fought without fighting. The way you built honor from dirt. I found it beautiful. There is no honor in the mindless wielding of power, and it would not be honorable if I were to order you without first considering your wishes. You are a man sold into slavery, not a slave.” 

Esca thinks about this, nodding. He knows what it means to build honor from dirt, and to hold onto that honor with bloody nails, to preserve the fragments of dignity he has left in order to fashion some sense of meaning. He knows what it means to protect that flame of honor in an honorless system, in a honorless society. Maybe he and Marcus are not that different at all. Maybe Marcus’s love of Rome and his own hatred for Rome are born from the same sick, hungry place. “I will stay with you tonight,” he tells Marcus.

“Why?” Marcus fires back. “Because I want it?” 

“Yes,” Esca responds, eyes closing because he does not trust himself to keep his eyes the cold, glassy blue he strives for. “And because I do.” 

Lonely air huffs out of Marcus, warm on Esca’s lips. He bends to kiss his ear. “Thank you,” he murmurs. “Thank you.” 

\---

They’re tangled together by the banks of the river, the horses tied to a nearby tree and herons watching them from the water, standing upon their one-legged stilts. Esca is panting, hips shifting up into the solidity of Marcus’s thigh, eyes half-lidded and hazy. It’s becoming harder and harder to pretend than this is something he has any control over. Resisting Marcus used to be a scenario he at least imagined doing. Now he cannot even imagine it. 

Marcus bends to examine the tattoo on Esca’s bicep, thumbing the blue-grey lines with a furrow in his brow. “What do these symbols mean?” He asks, lips at Esca’s temple. 

Esca shivers then shrugs, reaches up and pushes and hand through Marcus’s hair absentmindedly. There are broken reeds beneath his back, cutting into him so he cants away from them, fitting himself more snugly against Marcus. This is not a question he knows how to answer in Latin, so he settles upon, “Nothing. They are just to look at.” 

Marcus smiles, a flash of white and then he’s biting Esca’s bicep, digging his teeth in inked skin. “Only to look at?” he grinds out. 

Esca hisses, lets his head fall back and grind into the dirt. He doesn’t like that Marcus thinks he can be coy with him, treat him like a friend, a lover, without consequence. It bothers him, but his body is a betrayal. His heartbeat quickens. Marcus’s hands are wandering, palming with certainty down his ribcage, his hip, his chest. Then one is fumbling beneath his pants, rubbing up the thickening length of him. There is nothing Esca can do anymore to not want this, nothing at all, so he parts his thighs and sucks Marcus’s tongue into his mouth when Marcus kisses him, he wrecks himself against Marcus’s strength with abandon. It is a foolish thing, to do this without attempting to preserve any small part of himself in quiet resistance, saved for himself. But Marcus has made him foolish. 

He arches off the ground, twisting a fist in Marcus’s hair. The herons call from the water and the river laps at its bank, but Esca can hear nothing but the blood pounding in his ears. _You lost_ it says. _You lost, again, to Rome._ He groans long and low into Marcus’s chest, ashamed of his shame, ashamed of the fire crackling inside of him with its many fuels, its many facets. 

Without realizing it, Esca is hurting Marcus. His nails are impossible-deep in Marcus’s unrelenting shoulders, he is gripping him with the intent to break, to shatter. Marcus shudders, breaks their kiss and pins him to the earth, studying his eyes like he’s looking for anger. But he can’t discern anything different in Esca because the anger is always there, the slow burning fury Esca holds for Rome, and holds for himself for not only serving Rome, but serving Rome willingly. Lovingly.

He frees a hand which becomes a fist around Marcus’s thick, scarred throat. The muscles in his face twitch, his mouth parted and unsure, dick hard between their bodies as he watches Marcus’s cheeks become red, watches his eyes water and cloud with confusion. “What-” Marcus manages to wheeze out before Esca throws his body off of him, wrestles him with clumsy, adrenaline-wild strength to his back. They fight uselessly, rolling over one another and throwing frantic, graceless punches and elbows until finally Esca ends up where he wants to be, straddled atop Marcus with his weight forcing the air from his lungs. This could be a violation of an oath, or it could be something Marcus needs, silently, with his begging eyes. It’s hard to know when he is not a typical slave, and Marcus is not the typical master.

Marcus is shaking with arousal, fear, both. They are locked together in silence for a moment, sucking in desperate breaths, eyes flashing in uncertainty. Esca rubs a trembling palm behind him, down between the steel-hard of Marcus’s thighs. Marcus is drunk with need. That much is clear. “You want me terribly,” Esca whispers, feeling the thick line of Marcus’s cock twitch beneath his fingers. 

He is mad with awe, stunned that he has Rome beneath him, Rome’s mouth slack and wet and pink and panting inches away from the tent of fabric between his legs. “You _enjoy_ having me here,” he gasps. It is another revelation. Marcus is thrusting mindlessly into the air, the one hand which is not partially pinned behind him is rubbing hungrily up whatever he can reach of Esca’s flesh. There is only black in his eyes, red on his throat and cheeks, bits of grass and earth stuck to the perspiration on his neck. He’s a desperate, hastily-drawn picture of powerlessness. Esca’s breath catches. 

Pressing his hips into Marcus’s mouth, his chin, Esca does not bother to free himself from his clothing. He knows in his gut that no matter the circumstance, no matter where they are and how many beasts witness them, Marcus is going to make him come. He grinds into him, breath rattling and legs quaking. Marcus mouths him through fabric, eyes shut like bliss and lashes a dark half-moon on sweat-pink cheek bones. He is a mess, undone, an Empire conquered and fallen. It is everything Esca wants. 

It doesn’t take Esca long to finish, a hiss and a cry choked out into the sun. Marcus falls limp and gasping beneath him, and not until long after they have both caught their breath does Esca find that he, too, did not take long to finish. 

\---  
Things become much easier after they cross the wall twofold. Esca makes uneasy peace with Rome. After all, it is not Rome which grants him his freedom. It is Marcus, and Marcus is no longer Rome, not since returning the Eagle and restoring his name, not since forging his own identity inside a cruel empire, instead of forever falling short of living up to the myth of a soldier in a falsely ideal empire. 

Marcus no longer asks Esca if he wishes to stay in his bed overnight. Esca no longer needs to prove he holds power, or fabricate dignity and honor from his place in the dirt. They both breathe air, they have both lost things to the and from the place they were born. Esca decides that they are more alike than he ever cared to acknowledge when he was Marcus’s slave, two outsiders in their own countries, building some sliver of mud between the two to inhabit. They did not belong, and now they do, at least to one another, and that, too, is a revelation. 

Esca comes in from the stables, sweat in rivulets down his back and his tunic forgotten, tossed atop a bale of straw. Marcus is on the bed, one knee bent. Though he has mostly recovered from their time north of the wall, he still tires easily and walks with a limp, and Esca always sends him in after their rides to rest in favor of untacking the horses. It pleases Esca to order Marcus indoors, so much so that he does not mind doing the same work he did as a slave. 

Marcus watches Esca very carefully as he enters, a sweeping look from his shins to his eyes, and swallows visibly. “I see you’ve lost your tunic again.” He says. There’s a glint in his eyes, an unguarded thrill to them which makes Esca’s stomach flip. It’s simple to feel these things now that that are just as they are, without symbol, without power written into them between the lines. He can allow Marcus to see the storm. 

He shrugs. “Your horse. He likes to rub his face on me after I take the bit out, it ruins all my clothes. I’ve told you. They always get dirty.” He stops in the middle of the room and slowly unbuckles his belt, tugging his pants around his hips, leaving only dusting of dark hair is visible above the waistband. There is a moment heavy with silence as they regard each other, too close, always too close. Eventually, Esca relents. “Come here,” he orders. 

Marcus rises unsteadily but certainly, his eyes dark and aflame. He stops inches from Esca and licks his lips before leaning to fit their mouths together, but Esca stops him with an open palm on his chest. “Not yet,” he murmurs, reaching up and making a fist in Marcus’s hair. He pushes him to his knees. “Kneel,” he rasps, voice thick, cock twitching under Marcus’s breath. “Kneel.” 

 

Marcus does, with a smile.


End file.
